How Will You Measure Your Life?

By Clayton Christensen   Article

An Unending Stream of Extenuating Circumstances

“This marginal-cost argument applies the same way in choosing right and wrong: it addresses a question I discuss with my students: how to live a life of integrity—and stay out of jail. The marginal cost of doing something “just this once” always seems to be negligible, but the full cost will typically be much higher. Yet unconsciously, we will naturally employ the marginal-cost doctrine in our personal lives. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay.” And the voice in our head seems to be right; the price of doing something wrong “just this once” usually appears alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t see where that path is ultimately headed or the full cost that the choice entails. …

100 Percent of the Time Is Easier Than 98 Percent of the Time

Many of us have convinced ourselves that we are able to break our own personal rules “just this once.” In our minds, we can justify these small choices. None of those things, when they first happen, feels like a life-changing decision. The marginal costs are almost always low. But each of those decisions can roll up into a much bigger picture, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to be. …

If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up. That’s the lesson I learned: it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. The boundary—your personal moral line—is powerful because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again.

Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.”

Leadership Insight

By Michael Josephson  Source

“A boss creates fear: a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame; a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all; a leader asks questions.” – Russell H. Ewing

Welcome aboard – watch your step!

By John Heckers   Article

“There are several things to be aware of with onboarding. Here are a few.

1). Watch your new boss. Regardless of what you’re told in the interviewing phase, the nuances of the corporate culture will not become clear until you’re actually on-board. …

2). Imitate your boss. If your boss is a very hard worker, you should be at least as a hard of a worker. Is the corporate culture strictly hierarchical? Don’t try to go around it. Watch and see what is valued and perform those functions exceedingly well.

3). Don’t take time off. You need to learn your new job. Every day you’re off is two to three days of getting back into the swing of it. Remember, if you take time off in the first six months, your boss might not remember why s/he hired you.

4). Your job is your top priority. If you are newly employed, put your social and personal life on hold and knuckle down to your work. …

5). They don’t know you. You may be a great employee. They don’t know that. So you desperately need to show them. Don’t do things that make you look undedicated, too family oriented or like a slacker. …

6). Quit smoking now! I have talked with many executives and numerous HR people. Many will not hire a smoker, and many, if they find out the person is a smoker, will get rid of him or her ASAP. …

7). Control your alcohol intake. This is especially true at company parties where “one” should be your limit, but it is also true even in the privacy of your own home. And, of course, many companies have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal substances.

8). Be very, very, very careful with emails. One rule of thumb is – if you wonder if you should send it or not – don’t. Stay off the company internet for anything but company business, even if it is technically OK to be on it.”

Why Corporate Ethics Statements Don’t Work

By Liz Ryan   Article

“Every company of any size introduced an Ethics Statement a decade or more ago. In too many cases, they’re just words buried deep on the company website. …

Most of us in corporate America are so steeped in the “win at any cost” mindset. We’ve grown up in the culture of competing to win, taking no prisoners, and making the bold move, no matter where it sits on the ethical borderline. Many of us have had our knuckles rapped for being insufficiently risk-taking or for holding the line on ethical issues.

The hardest thing I know for a corporate salaryman (or woman) to do is to tell the boss when she or he is wrong. Writing the formal Ethics Statement is the easy part. Listening to employees, calling attention to squirrelly practices, and sounding the alarm when the company is ethically off-kilter are the hard things to do. We should be making those easy and risk-free, not terrifying and career-ending.”

6 Key Attributes of a Winning Corporate Culture

By Martin Zwilling   Article

” 1. You can’t force culture, you can only create environment. Every culture is the culmination of the leadership, values, language, people processes, rules, and other conditions, good or bad, present within the organization. …

2. You are on the outside what you are on the inside. The service you provide for your customers will never be greater than the service you provide to your employees. You can’t force people to treat customers well if they feel ill-used themselves. …

3. Success is doing the right things the right way. By defining your values and behavior by the right actions, you simplify and enable everyone to make the right decisions on the front line. …

4. People do exactly what they are incented to do. Your expressed values will be perceived as hollow and meaningless unless you base compensation and rewards on the behaviors that go along with the values. It takes diligence and courage to hire only people with these values, and fire ones who have lost them.

5. Input = output. … Communicate your values often, and use values-based performance metrics to gauge your results, measure the level of implementation, leadership development, and succession planning.

6. The environment you want can be built on shared, strategic values and financial responsibility. … Values are most critical when making tough decisions, but that is also when they come in handiest to illuminate the way forward.”

“If I were you…”

By Seth Godin   Article

“But of course, you’re not.

And this is the most important component of strategic marketing: we’re not our customer.

Empathy isn’t dictated to us by a focus group or a statistical analysis. Empathy is the powerful (and rare) ability to imagine what motivates someone else to act.

When a politician or a pundit vilifies someone for her actions, he’s missed the point, because all he can do is imagine what he would do in that situation, completely avoiding an opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes, to try on a new worldview, to attempt to imagine the circumstances that would lead to any action other than the one he would take.

When a teacher can’t see why a student is stuck, or when an interface designer dismisses the 12% of the users who can’t find the ‘off’ switch… we’re seeing a failure of empathy, not a flaw in the user base. …

You don’t have to wear panty hose to be a great brand manager at L’eggs, nor do you need to be unemployed to work on a task force on getting people back to work. What is required, though, is a persistent effort to understand how other people see the world, and to care about it.”

10 Ways to Motivate Anyone

By Geil Browning   Article

“… there is no cookie-cutter approach to motivating your people. What inspires one person may leave the next cold. …

1.   Analytical types want to know that a project is valuable, and that their work makes a difference to its success. They need a leader … whose expertise they believe benefits the group. They prefer compensation that is commensurate with their contribution. …

2.   People who are “structural” by nature want to know their work aids the company’s progress. They prefer a leader who is organized, competent, and good with details. … An encouraging email is appropriate to communicate with them.

3.   Social people want to feel personally valued, and that what they are doing has an impact on a project. They go the extra mile for a leader who expresses faith in their abilities. They prefer to be rewarded in person with a gesture that is from the heart. …

4.   Innovative employees must buy into a cause. To them, the big picture matters more than the individual who is leading the charge. They prefer to be rewarded with something unconventional and imaginative, and would find a whimsical token of your esteem very meaningful.

5.   Quiet staffers don’t need a lot of fanfare, but they appreciate private, one-on-one encouragement.

6.   Expressive people feel more motivated when assignments are openly discussed and an open door is available. They like public recognition, with pomp, and ceremony.

7.   Peacekeepers hope everyone will move in the same direction. They’ll never demand a reward or recognition, so it’s up to you to offer it.

8.   Hard-drivers are independent thinkers. If they agree with you, they’ll be highly motivated. They will let you know what they’d like as an extrinsic reward, and they tend to want whatever it is right away.

….”

So You Want to Reduce Your Costs? Don’t Focus on Cost Reductions

By Lonnie Wilson   Article

“If the title of this article sounds odd, don’t be surprised. The implementation of a lean initiative will teach you about a whole litany of paradoxes. There is the jidoka paradox: Shut down the system so the system will run continuously. There is the standard-work paradox: Standardize the work so you can change it. The production paradox: Slow down the machine so you can speed up the process. And my personal favorite, the Toyota success paradox: Toyota has been very successful because they tolerate failure.

Paradoxes abound and the one about cost reductions is particularly interesting. Most plant managers seek to reduce their operating costs and, regrettably, most of them go about it by implementing a “cost-reduction program.” And guess what? Two predictable things happen. First, they reduce costs. Second, … all the costs come back and usually with a vengeance. …

A Taiichi Ohno Lean Initiative

Well, if you don’t implement a “cost reduction program” to reduce costs; what should you implement? Simple. Implement a lean initiative …

“Establishing the flow is the basic condition.”

“All we are doing is looking at the time line…..And we are reducing that time by removing the non-value added wastes.”

“After World War II, our main concern was how to produce high quality goods … After 1955, however, the question became how to make the exact quantity needed.””

8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses

By Geoffrey James   Article

” few years back, I interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. I learned that the “best of the best” tend to share the following eight core beliefs.

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.

Average bosses see business as a conflict between companies, departments and groups. They build huge armies of “troops” to order about, demonize competitors as “enemies,” and treat customers as “territory” to be conquered.

Extraordinary bosses see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. They naturally create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with other companies, customers … and even competitors. …

4. My employees are my peers, not my children.

Average bosses see employees as inferior, immature beings who simply can’t be trusted if not overseen by a patriarchal management. Employees take their cues from this attitude, expend energy on looking busy and covering their behinds.

Extraordinary bosses treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.

Average bosses see fear–of getting fired, of ridicule, of loss of privilege–as a crucial way to motivate people.  As a result, employees and managers alike become paralyzed and unable to make risky decisions.

Extraordinary bosses inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization’s goals, truly enjoy what they’re doing and (of course) know they’ll share in the rewards.”

The Power of Pause

-

Who
can
wait
quietly
while
the
mud
settles?

- Lao Tzu

Source

Declining Employee Loyalty: A Casualty of the New Workplace

Knowledge@Wharton  Article

“… some employees are clearly feeling disconnected from their work. Among the reasons cited for this: the recession, during which companies laid off huge swaths of their employees with little regard for loyalty or length of service; a whittling away of benefits, training and promotions for those who remain; and a generation of young millennials (ages 15 to 30) who have a different set of expectations about their careers, including the need to “be their own brand,” wherever it takes them. In a nomadic world, one of the casualties is a decreasing sense of commitment to the organization.

Wharton management professor Adam Cobb sees another reason for what is clearly an evolving relationship. “When you are talking about loyalty in the workplace, you have to think about it as a reciprocal exchange,” says Cobb. “My loyalty to the firm is contingent on my firm’s loyalty to me. But there is one party in that exchange which has tremendously more power, and that is the firm.” …

Employee behavior, Cobb says, has been influenced by the dramatic organizational restructuring that began 30 years ago. “Firms have always laid off workers, but in the 1980s, you started to see healthy firms laying off workers, mainly for shareholder value.” In their announcements of pending staff cutbacks, “firms would say, ‘We are doing this in the long-term interest of our shareholders,’” Cobb notes. “You would also see cuts in employee benefits — 401(k)s instead of defined benefit pensions, and health care costs being pushed on to employees. The trend was toward having the risks be borne by workers instead of firms. If I’m an employee, that’s a signal to me that I’m not going to let firms control my career.”"

Future of Work Manifesto

By Jamie Notter   Article

“12. Decen­tralized leade­rship requires less middle manag­ement, but more middle level thinking.

• The role of manag­ement is to be the “keeper of the story”. To make sure there is trans­parency flowing from top echelon to front line.

• The role of manag­ement is to facil­itate difficult conve­rsations and manage conflict.

• The role of manag­ement is to facil­itate the finding of solut­ions; not to dictate them.

• The role of manag­ement is to be the “conn­ector”, to match people with the right skills and abilities to projects where those skills are most needed.

• The role of manag­ement is to be the “brid­ger”, to protect and ensure inclusion – to ensure that different voices and persp­ectives are heard and involved in the work of the organ­ization at all levels.

• The role of manag­ement is to eradicate the fallacy of “best pract­ices” – to ensure there is constant learning and agility in business proce­sses.

• The role of manag­ement is to be the “spac­e-maker”, to ensure learning can happen on a conti­nuous basis by providing conta­iners where exper­imentation is encou­raged.

• The role of manag­ement is to remove hurdles to engag­ement.

• The role of manag­ement is to release the flow of infor­mation and data and to get it to the right people at the right time. The new workplace is data-­driven; but infor­mation is not wisdom. It’s the human analysis of the data that drives value.

• Data is the start of exper­imentation and learning, not the end.

• The role of manag­ement is to hire talent that is agile enough to shift and flow based on market need.

• The role of manag­ement is to get out of the way.”

Is This Really the Golden Age for Inventors?

By Adam Davidson   Article

“These days, the average costs for a patent are about $10,000 — chump change for a corporation, but a considerable amount for many home inventors. And even when they spend that much, they often see their patent applications rejected. Even if an application is approved, larger companies have become adroit at swooping in and copying the product with just enough changes to make it legal. As a result, many give up on the process altogether. Gary Clegg invented the Slanket before Allstar Products Group introduced its near-identical Snuggie. Allstar outmarketed the unpatented Slanket, and the rest is history. …

Since he took over the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2009, David Kappos says, he has thought every day about a man he met from northern Vermont (“He was dressed, literally, in overalls with a red-and-white checkered shirt”) who had invented a brilliant, transformative two-cycle engine for a snow blower. “If you don’t protect your invention with intellectual property,” Kappos says, “it will be copied almost immediately if it’s good.” So Kappos has initiated a host of initiatives to help the small inventor with cheaper patent filing fees, pro bono legal help and a more responsive patent office.

It probably won’t matter, though, says Paul Romer, an economist at N.Y.U. and perhaps the leading thinker of our time on economic growth. It costs around $1 million to defend a patent-infringement lawsuit, Romer says. So even if a lone inventor has a legitimate patent claim, a large company can sue and force the person into bankruptcy.”

How to be a great leader

Source

What if Families Handled Finances Like the Federal Government Does?

From Heritage.org   Article

“In 2010, median family income was $51,360. If a typical family followed the federal government’s lead, it would spend $73,319 and put 30 cents of every dollar spent on a credit card. This family would have racked up $325,781 in credit card debt—like a mortgage, only without the house. What credit card company would continue lending money to this family?”

Kickstarter Sets Off $7 Million Stampede for a Watch Not Yet Made – NYTimes.com

By Jenna Wortham   Article

Start-Ups Look to the Crowd

“When Eric Migicovsky, an engineer, wanted to develop a line of wristwatches that could display information from an iPhone — like caller ID and text messages — he went the traditional route of asking venture capitalists to finance his company. But he couldn’t even get a foot in the door, let alone secure any money for what he called the Pebble watch.

So he turned to Kickstarter, a site where ordinary people back creative projects. Backers could pledge $99 and were promised a Pebble watch in return. Less than two hours after the project went up on the site, Mr. Migicovsky and his partners hit their goal of $100,000. “By that night, we were at $600,000,” said Mr. Migicovsky, who is 25 and a recent engineering graduate of the University of Waterloo. “We went out for a beer to celebrate, went home and slept, and when we woke up, we were at a million dollars.” As of Friday afternoon, nearly 50,000 people had pledged close to $7 million ….

Mr. Migicovsky and his partners did not have to give up any portion of their company to the venture capitalists. They still own 100 percent of it.”

How Apple dodges billions in taxes: A concise guide

From The Week  Article

“How much does Apple sidestep in taxes?
Corporations don’t publicly release tax returns, but The Times estimates that Apple avoided paying $2.4 billion in federal taxes last year, citing the work of former Treasury Department economist Martin A. Sullivan. Apple did report paying $3.3 billion in taxes globally on $34.2 billion in profits, giving it a 9.8 percent tax rate. …

How does it manage this accounting feat?
Essentially, Apple routes a sizable portion of its profits through countries and states that allow it to pay low tax rates. For example, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has a tiny subsidiary in Reno called Braeburn Capital that manages and invests much of Apple’s enormous cash reserve — California has an 8.84 percent corporate tax rate; Nevada’s is zero, and the state has no capital gains tax.

That’s all it takes to save $2.4 billion?
Not quite. Apple is also a pioneer of a tasty-sounding accounting move called the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” which involves routing profits through subsidiaries in Ireland and in the Netherlands, before sending it on to the British Virgin Islands or another Caribbean tax haven. In all, about 70 percent of Apple’s profits are housed overseas.

And this is all legal?
Yes. … Much of their revenue comes from sources like patents and digital downloads, intangible things you can easily “sell” from anywhere in the world, particularly places that offer good tax arrangements. When people in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East buy songs and movies from iTunes, for example, the sale is recorded in a nondescript office in Luxembourg, a notorious tax haven. …

Is this ethical? ….”

Turning 60: The Twelve Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned So Far

By Tony Schwartz   Article

“1. The more we know about ourselves, the more power we have to behave better. Humility is underrated. …

2. Notice the good. We each carry an evolutionary predisposition to dwell on what’s wrong in our lives. The antidote is to deliberately take time out each day to notice what’s going right, and to feel grateful for what you’ve got. …

3. Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. …

4. Never seek your value at the expense of someone else’s. …

5. Do the most important thing first in the morning and you’ll never have an unproductive day. …

6. It’s possible to be excellent at anything, but nothing valuable comes easy and discomfort is part of growth. …

7. The more behaviors you intentionally make automatic in your life, the more you’ll get done. If you have to think about doing something each time you do it, you probably won’t do it for very long. …

8. Slow down. Speed is the enemy of nearly everything in life that really matters. It’s addictive and it undermines quality, compassion, depth, creativity, appreciation and real relationship.

9. The feeling of having enough is magical. It rarely depends on how much you’ve got. More is rarely better. Too much of anything eventually becomes toxic.

10. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, and don’t expect anything in return. … When in doubt, default to calm and kind.

11. Add more value in the world than you’re using up. … Life’s primary challenge is to put more back into the world than we take out.

12. Savor every moment — even the difficult ones. It all goes so fast.”

Manufacturing at the click of a mouse: the third industrial revolution commences

By Joe McKendrick   Article

“A new report in The Economist calls the increasing digitization seen in manufacturing with technologies such as 3D printing the dawn of the “Third Industrial Revolution.” One of the most pronounced changes now being seen is a shift away from moving production to regions with low labor costs back to regions where markets reside.  “Labor costs are growing less and less important,” The Economist notes: “a $499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labor, of which the final assembly in China accounted for just $8.”

In fact, the shift to localized production has already been underway — in a new survey of 106 executives at large US-based manufacturing companies, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) finds more than a third, 37 percent, plan to bring back production to the United States from China or are considering it.

… an important factor, is the rise of automation and digitization of production processes within US companies, thanks to information technology and lean methodologies. Emerging technologies, particularly 3D printing, also makes production at the source viable and cost-effective, and it’s likely that many companies and innovators will be embracing “desktop manufacturing” as a way to quickly and smartly assemble and mass produce their goods.

… 3D printing will change “the geography of supply chains,” since 3D printing can take place anytime, anywhere. Spare parts will no longer have to be ordered from some distant locale, they can be made on the spot.”

Six Secrets of Inspirational Leadership

By Dan Rockwell   Article

“#1. Pushing people isn’t inspiration. Ever feel like you’re pushing people to do what you want. It’s unsatisfying, frustrating, and draining. Think pushing ropes. If you feel like you’re pushing ropes you aren’t leading you’re manipulating, coercing, or pressuring.

#2. Inspired people pull you, you don’t push them. The test of inspiration is igniting passion in others. Once you inspire someone, they frequently go further than you expect. They challenge you to reach beyond your initial expectations. They press you, you don’t press them.

#3. Shared values are foundational to inspiring. Don’t ask people to align with your values, align with theirs. When you determine what makes someone tick you’ve found the secret to inspiring them.

#4. Tell the truth about challenges, optimistically. The bigger the challenge the more valuable their contribution becomes. Minimizing devalues.

#5. Asking inspires – telling deflates. Telling makes people feel like cogs. Asking makes them participants. Participation fuels passion.”

4 Behaviors That Sabotage Your Investment Goals

By Amy Fontinelle   Article

“Paying Yourself Last
If you don’t make saving and investing a priority, your account balance will never grow. Paying yourself first means that once a month, or each time you get a paycheck, you set aside a portion of that money for your own savings before you pay any bills or buy anything. …

Not Maxing out Tax-Advantaged Accounts
Taxes take a significant chunk out of your investment gains when you invest through regular, taxable accounts. When you invest through tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, your gains grow tax free. …

Paying Too Many Investment Fees
… Here are two common places where fees could be eating into your returns:

• 401(k) accounts - 401(k)s often have limited investment options and those options sometimes have higher fees than what you’d pay for a comparable investment, if you could shop around. …
• Frequent trading - For many investments, you have to pay a commission each time you buy and each time you sell. … open an account with a brokerage, like Fidelity or Vanguard, that offers a wide range of investment options with no commissions and low fees. …

Buying High and Selling Low
… It’s incredibly tempting to buy an investment when it’s on the upswing and everyone is excited about how well it’s performing. … There are two good ways to counteract these emotional tendencies. One is to buy a diversified index fund or exchange-traded fund … periodically throughout the year, so that you’re not strongly affected by high and low points in the market. Another is to learn the art of value investing, … buying when a stock is trading at two-thirds or less of its fundamental value – in other words, when it’s unpopular, but the underlying company is still a good bet.”

Do you have a people strategy?

Be Seth Godin    Article

“Hard to imagine a consultant or investor asking the CMO, “so, what’s your telephone strategy?” We don’t have a telephone strategy. The telephone is a tool, a simple medium, and it’s only purpose is to connect us to interested human beings.

And then the internet comes along and it’s mysterious and suddenly we need an email strategy and a social media strategy and a web strategy and a mobile strategy.

No, we don’t.

It’s still people. We still have one and only one thing that matters, and it’s people.

All of these media are conduits, they are tools that human beings use to waste time or communicate or calculate or engage or learn. Behind each of the tools is a person. Do you have a story to tell that person? An engagement or a benefit to offer them?

Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler.”

10 tips for ‘spying’ on your competition

By Tom Searcy    Article 

“The fancy phrase for spying on your industry is “competitive intelligence,” …. Here are 10 perfectly legal ways to conduct online “espionage.”

1. Educate yourself about Google scholar. Instead of just searching on Google (GOOG) and getting all the crud the Internet has to offer, refine your search. Start with Google Scholar, which provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. …

2. Go where the writers go. Check out the reference links at the Writer’s Guild of America website. …

3. Get to know university librarians. … I recommend starting your search for trade magazine articles with RDS/Business & Industry, Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe and Dow-Jones Interactive. …

4. Run a background check. KnowX.com reports on bankruptcies, liens, judgments, and other legal matters regarding both individuals and businesses.

5. All the news that’s fit to sell. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the San Jose Mercury News all have great story archives. … For business magazines, I prefer Inc. and Forbes, ….

6. See your analyst. … Here are some of the best places to go: GartnerGroup, Yankee Group, Meta Group, IDG, Forrester Research, Jupiter Communications, Dataquest, and EStats.com

7. Shop the competition. Do you know what a mystery shopper is? That’s someone who is hired to pretend to shop at a store to monitor the customer’s experience. If possible, try to do the same. If practical, actually buy something.

8. You have my permission. Does the competitive company have a permission-marketing opt-in email invitation on its website? By all means, give them your email to see what you will receive.

9. At your wire service. … Try both Business Wire and PR Newswire. … For financial news, also try Dow Jones Newswires, Reuters, andBloomberg.

10. Take stock of the competition. One of best websites for gathering competitive intelligence on public companies is Hoover’s Online, which for a fee … Don’t forget the free stuff at Yahoo! Finance ….

… There is nothing illegal or unethical about using the Internet to learn as much as possible about your industry, your competitors, and even your prospects.”

The Hypocrisy of the 1%

By Alyce Lomax   Article

“The AFL-CIO has launched its annualPayWatch data, revealing that the ratio of the averageS&P 500 CEO pay package to that of the typical worker has once again risen; it’s now an eye-popping 380-to-1. This ratio was just 42-to-1 in 1980.

The average annual CEO pay of companies in the index was $12.94 million in 2011, rising by 13.9% and following a 22.8% increase in CEO pay in 2010. While chief executive pay has become more lucrative, regular Joes’ and Josephines’ incomes haven’t seen similar results. Last year, average worker wages grew by a paltry 2.8% to an average $34,053.

The AFL-CIO was wise to point out that many American investors haven’t necessarily experienced a great windfall either. The S&P index ended 2011 flat. …

In 2007, Whole Foods Market‘s (Nasdaq: WFM  ) John Mackey announced he would relinquish pay, stating, “I no longer want to work for money.” He went on to say, “The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed I’d have and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness. … I am now 53 years old and I have reached a place in my life where I no longer want to work for money, but simply for the joy of the work itself and to better answer the call to service that I feel so clearly in my own heart.”

Even prior to that decision, Mackey’s compensation was reasonable in a world where many CEOs made millions every year. Whole Foods Market currently has a pay cap onexecutive compensation; executives can’t exceed 19 times the average worker’s total pay at the grocer.”